NEW YORK, NY.- Hunter East Harlem Gallery at Hunter College is presenting the educational project, Visions of Confinement: A Lens on Women in the United States Prison System, organized by Isaac Scott of The Confined Arts and Arden Sherman, Curator, Hunter East Harlem Gallery with Alana Hernandez, Lazarus Exhibition Fellow. Visions of Confinement is a summer laboratory and flex space inside Hunter East Harlem Gallery aimed at facilitating conversations around the issues associated with female incarceration.
The exhibition at Hunter East Harlem Gallery revolves around the reality and experience of incarcerated women, formerly incarcerated women, and their families. The gallery has been turned into an "educational lounge” for the duration of the summer, featuring a dialogue wall, a letter-writing station, a listening station, a lounge area, and a small library inside the gallery space— all of which address, in a myriad of ways, artistic meditations on the experience of women living in confined spaces, the shifting habits that happen after one is released, and the methods adopted by families of those incarcerated. This installation is multidisciplinary—exhibiting painting, poetry, photography, and sculpture by artists who were previously incarcerated or deal with incarceration in some manner in their work.
The project hopes to unearth the struggles faced by incarcerated women in this moment of crisis for the country’s justice system and be part of an ongoing effort to bring about reforms and improve prison conditions. According to Reproductive Injustice, a 2015 study, 75 percent of incarcerated women in New York State are mothers, and more than half have a history serious or chronic illness. These statistics are among those to be discussed the exhibit’s summer run.
Moreover, the aim of this project also seeks to facilitate an open dialogue on the issues of: disassociation with families, loneliness, life after prison, experiences of reentry, open relationships in prison versus religious convictions, and other pressing topics. Many of these topics will be discussed in some fashion via programming that will run throughout the duration of the exhibition. This is made possible by exhibiting collaborators: The Confined Arts; Artistic Noise; Incorrigibles Project; Write to Matter; Life After Life in Prison by Sara Bennett; Rehabilitation Through the Arts; Lullaby Project; Die Jim Crow; S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective; Arts and Resistance Through Education; Center for Justice at Columbia University; Justice and Education Initiative, Riker’s Island, and Mariposa and the Saint.
Visions of Confinement is supported in part by funding from Hunter College’s Arts Across the Curriculum, a program aimed at boosting interdisciplinary collaboration among Hunter's esteemed arts departments, introducing the arts into "non-arts" disciplines, and engaging with the New York arts community.
